Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Here’s a series of tweets from Ken Rosenthal tonight, and I’m showing these here not to get on Rosenthal, who isn’t in any way incorrect, but to illustrate a larger point:
Sources: #Dodgers aggressively trying to move Kemp, Crawford or Ethier. Puig not in play.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 10, 2014
#Dodgers willing to include anything from no money to significant money depending upon return.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 10, 2014
#Dodgers‘ Kemp obviously drawing attention, but some teams prefer a left-handed hitter such as Ethier or Crawford. — Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 10, 2014
Well, yes. Of course. I have no doubt that these reports are accurate. It’s just that the idea that the Dodgers would badly want to move an outfielder has been a thing for well over a year now. I wrote about it just last week at FanGraphs, because remember, this isn’t just about Yasiel Puig, Matt Kemp, Carl Crawford, and Andre Ethier. It’s about the fact that Joc Pederson is ready or close to it, and that Scott Van Slyke was shockingly useful, and that Alex Guerrero might not be an infielder and probably has no trade value due to his reported out clause.
As for the specifics of who gets traded where and for who, that’s a discussion for another time. The point is, you’re going to need to steel yourself for endless amounts of this all winter, at least until something happens, and maybe even after that. We’ve been over this a lot, anyway. Either they’re going to trade one of them for a return that most fans will find terribly disappointing, or they’re going to trade someone you don’t want to see go. Personally, I’d rather Kemp stick around, but you wouldn’t have to try too hard to convince me that an injury-prone outfielder who is a negative on defense and has over $100m still due him is hardly untouchable.
Again, though, this isn’t about specifics, and it’s not even about Rosenthal. It’s about a process that is clearly going on, one that we’ve been waiting on a resolution for for well over a year, and now across two regimes. Frankly, the sooner something happens, the better.
